ASUS Announces Rapture GT-AX6000 WiFi 6 Router with Dual 2.5 Gbps Ports

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Image: ASUS



ASUS has announced a new premium WiFi 6 router, the ROG Rapture GT-AX6000. It features dual 2.5 Gbps ports and combined speeds of up to 6,000 Mbps. It supports up to 4,804 Mbps on the 5 Ghz band and 1,148 Mbps on the 2.4 Ghz band. It is powered by a 2.0 GHz 64-bit quad-core Broadcom CPU paired with next-gen Broadcom WiFi 6 chipsets. One of the 2.5 Gbps ports can be configured for LAN or WAN for up to 3.5 Gbps of WAN bandwidth.



WAN aggregation allows a 2.5 Gbps port to be combined with a 1 Gbps port to unlock up to 3.5 Gbps of WAN bandwidth, fast enough for even the latest ultra-high-speed ISPs. This massive internet bandwidth can be shared via WiFi 6 or the second 2.5 Gbps port in LAN mode.With LAN aggregation, users can bond two 1 Gbps LAN ports together to create a 2 Gbps LAN connection, which is great for supplying extra bandwidth to...

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[Brian_B]

$399 buys you a good bit of Ubiquiti ... You can get a 10Gb SFP business class Dream Machine for less (w/o WiFi, admittedly)

My setup right now, while not 2.5Gb, still cost less than $399 - ERX with 2 AC APs. While I don't have 2.5Gb WAN, I do have 2 APs at opposite ends of the house for seamless coverage, failover WAN 1GB support, and the option to drop in more WiFi (or radio link) APs at any time without any hassle to extend coverage as much as I want to.

The ERX does support LAG, but it's not really fast enough to make any use of it, so I won't really use that as a bulletpoint. The business-class routers definitely do though. I will say that my setup doesn't look like the Jaws of Life, an aborted Star Wars droid, or something my son made out of random Legos while high on shrooms - UBNT stuff generally is very clean, professional, and most importantly, unobtrusive.

Apart from the setup and UI, which does take some saavy -- I think it's really, really hard to beat a ERX + AP for home use, all the way up to about 1GB.

I'm sure it will sell well because it's "gamer" though.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

doesn't look like the Jaws of Life, an aborted Star Wars droid, or something my son made out of random Legos while high on shrooms

Yeah, it's unfortunate the common design elements happening on consumer products these days. Just seems to be getting worse and worse. In terms of what is essentially raw horsepower though this thing is a beast but that price is a bit much but that too is becoming a norm for these kinds of things when they market them to gamer households.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Just to add, as I was telling @David_Schroth, something else I've seen in recent years with consumer grade WiFi routers. Various security features are becoming paid services. I didn't specifically see anything in the press release or product page for this one but I wouldn't doubt there something somewhere in the fine print. I've seen some situations where the very top of tier keeps 'em for life but it's not uncommon for various security or QoS features to be limited a year before you have to pay to keep them.

 

[Zarathustra]

I never understood why 2.5 and 5gbit standards were needed, when 10GBase-T was already a thing.

I mean, the jump from 10Mbit -> 100Mbit -> Gigabit felt like was fairly rapid, and then we were stuck at gigabit forever. Sure the standard existed for 10GBase-T, but it never got mass produced, so equipment stayed prohibitively expensive.

And now, instead they are pushing these stupid tweener standards, instead of going straight for 10gig.

I got tired of waiting and went 10Gig fiber at home. 10GBase-SR. At first I used used enterprise routers for cheap off eBay, but then I bought Mikrotik gear.

I actually have one 10G-Base-T line in the house. One end is hooked up to my testbench machine, the other his hooked up to one of my MikroTik switches using a 10G-BaseT SFP+ module.

I wasn't expecting much out of the copper adapter module, but it appears to get **** near full speed in testing.

 

[Zarathustra]

$399 buys you a good bit of Ubiquiti ... You can get a 10Gb SFP business class Dream Machine for less (w/o WiFi, admittedly)

My setup right now, while not 2.5Gb, still cost less than $399 - ERX with 2 AC APs. While I don't have 2.5Gb WAN, I do have 2 APs at opposite ends of the house for seamless coverage, failover WAN 1GB support, and the option to drop in more WiFi (or radio link) APs at any time without any hassle to extend coverage as much as I want to.

The ERX does support LAG, but it's not really fast enough to make any use of it, so I won't really use that as a bulletpoint. The business-class routers definitely do though. I will say that my setup doesn't look like the Jaws of Life, an aborted Star Wars droid, or something my son made out of random Legos while high on shrooms - UBNT stuff generally is very clean, professional, and most importantly, unobtrusive.

Apart from the setup and UI, which does take some saavy -- I think it's really, really hard to beat a ERX + AP for home use, all the way up to about 1GB.

I'm sure it will sell well because it's "gamer" though.

I used to like Ubiquiti, but I am really souring on them as of late, with their moving **** to the cloud, and discontinuing more and more DIY controller stuff.

It was particularly ironic that their latest push to move all of their Unifi Video customers to the cloud by discontinuiong the local version of the software came exactly as all of their cloud data was compromised

I'm still running my Unifi AP's, but at some point they are going away. Ruckus is the leading contender to replace them, but I haven't decided yet.

I'm still hoping for something I like better than Ruckus to come along (I really like running a standalone controller, like Unifi has allowed me to do)

 

[Zarathustra]

Just to add, as I was telling @David_Schroth, something else I've seen in recent years with consumer grade WiFi routers. Various security features are becoming paid services. I didn't specifically see anything in the press release or product page for this one but I wouldn't doubt there something somewhere in the fine print. I've seen some situations where the very top of tier keeps 'em for life but it's not uncommon for various security or QoS features to be limited a year before you have to pay to keep them.

I don't understand how they can get away with this in a world that has free open source alternatives...

Yet another reason to keep pfSense as a router/firewall I guess.

 

[Brian_B]

I don't understand how they can get away with this in a world that has free open source alternatives...

Yet another reason to keep pfSense as a router/firewall I guess.

Convenience. 99.x% of the world has never heard of pfSense and wouldn’t know where to begin with it.

I admit that’s a powerful motivator. There are a lot of things I think “$3? Sure, that’s worth me not spending my time on”

but that barrier gets steeper and steeper as the price creeps up. Especially on something like QoS, which is a set it and forget it service that doesn’t need frequent updating for security.

 

[Riccochet]

$399 buys you a good bit of Ubiquiti ... You can get a 10Gb SFP business class Dream Machine for less (w/o WiFi, admittedly)

My setup right now, while not 2.5Gb, still cost less than $399 - ERX with 2 AC APs. While I don't have 2.5Gb WAN, I do have 2 APs at opposite ends of the house for seamless coverage, failover WAN 1GB support, and the option to drop in more WiFi (or radio link) APs at any time without any hassle to extend coverage as much as I want to.

The ERX does support LAG, but it's not really fast enough to make any use of it, so I won't really use that as a bulletpoint. The business-class routers definitely do though. I will say that my setup doesn't look like the Jaws of Life, an aborted Star Wars droid, or something my son made out of random Legos while high on shrooms - UBNT stuff generally is very clean, professional, and most importantly, unobtrusive.

Apart from the setup and UI, which does take some saavy -- I think it's really, really hard to beat a ERX + AP for home use, all the way up to about 1GB.

I'm sure it will sell well because it's "gamer" though.

I agree 100%. My ER-X-SFP and two AP-AC-LR's are going on 6 years old and are rock solid. I never mess with them, they never need to be rebooted and they do everything I need them to do. Another plus is the ERX's offer IPSec VPN support, where as 99% of consumer grade routers do not. I suppose most people don't need IPSec tunneling, but I do. The built in PoE also makes life easy.

Also don't know anyone that has had one of those consumer grade or "gaming" routers last more than a couple years before it starts getting flaky. Not that I haven't seen EdgeRouter's or Unifi AP's go bad. But, we have 1000's of them deployed and have only replaced a handful.

 

[LazyGamer]

I never understood why 2.5 and 5gbit standards were needed, when 10GBase-T was already a thing.

Power draw - and lack of need. In enterprises the power draw vs. fiber kept it pretty limited, and for home users the cost (all around) vs. 2.5Gbase-T and 5Gbase-T is pretty steep.

 

[Space_Ranger]

Power draw - and lack of need. In enterprises the power draw vs. fiber kept it pretty limited, and for home users the cost (all around) vs. 2.5Gbase-T and 5Gbase-T is pretty steep.

Yeah.. 10Gbase-T draws a ton of power, and the controllers heat up like nobody's business also. I have couple of Intel 10GBase-T cards and I need active cooling to keep them from crashing..

 

[Zarathustra]

Yeah.. 10Gbase-T draws a ton of power, and the controllers heat up like nobody's business also. I have couple of Intel 10GBase-T cards and I need active cooling to keep them from crashing..

Hmm.

I have an old Intel 82958EB in my testbench. Intel's TDP spec is a max of 6.5w at full load, which is a little much for a network card, but it is also one of the oldest ones out there, at 90nm. A modern smaller process would use much less power.

It does get hot to the touch, but I've never had to attach a fan to it or anything. General case airflow is sufficient to keep it in order.

 

[LazyGamer]

Have an X540-T2 that needs active cooling or will crash; the stock fan was grinding so I used a 5v fan adapter to bring a 40mm Delta down to reasonable levels. This one's in the NAS.

Have an X550-T2 in the desktop, and that one doesn't need active cooling.

Intel shows the X540-T2 at 17.4W typical power usage, which while negligible from a server standpoint, is quite a bit of power if you start sticking a bunch of them in a switch.

Now, the bigger challenge is that 10Gbase-T requires both more power on the interface side and new cabling by spec, and together that makes it far less desirable for consumer usage.

 

[Brian_B]

Intel shows the X540-T2 at 17.4W typical power usage, which while negligible from a server standpoint, is quite a bit of power if you start sticking a bunch of them in a switch.

It's quite a bit if your looking at it from a TDP standpoint too - that much power in a 1/2"x1/2" die is gonna get warm. There's no hard and fast rule for when you need passive or active cooling, apart from whatever it takes to keep Tj < Tmax.

Just a "for example", The X570 motherboard chipset that was fairly maligned for having active cooling only clocks in at 11W. The first Pentium chip @60Mhz was 15W TDP, and that's the first CPU I can recall that had active cooling in a time when most CPUs didn't even have passive coolers yet.

 

[Zarathustra]

Have an X540-T2 that needs active cooling or will crash; the stock fan was grinding so I used a 5v fan adapter to bring a 40mm Delta down to reasonable levels. This one's in the NAS.

Have an X550-T2 in the desktop, and that one doesn't need active cooling.

Intel shows the X540-T2 at 17.4W typical power usage, which while negligible from a server standpoint, is quite a bit of power if you start sticking a bunch of them in a switch.

Now, the bigger challenge is that 10Gbase-T requires both more power on the interface side and new cabling by spec, and together that makes it far less desirable for consumer usage.

That is quite a large amount of power draw.

I wonder why it is so much higher than my old 82958EB.

More hardware offloads?

I mean, I'd imahinebit must be manufactured on a smaller process than the 90nm mine is made on...

 

[LazyGamer]

More hardware offloads?

From what I can gather, yes - and that's something that Intel continues to expand.